


my body is dumb

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-19
Updated: 2013-05-21
Packaged: 2017-12-12 07:46:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/809068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Dave Strider develops a dislike for his body, it takes his older Bro to make him feel much differently.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. chapter one

**Author's Note:**

> I promise this will be at least sort of intimate, but it'll build up. Inspired by the song "My Body Is Dumb" by The Great American Novel. (I will actually finish this one, yes.)

For a wholehearted sixteen years of awkward clumsiness lathered with a relatively collected and forced demeanor — guaranteed with growing up and growing old in the Strider household — you have never quite learned to appreciate the true physicality of the body you were built in.

Your name is Dave Strider, and you’ve actually never been able to pinpoint the exact time when this restless feeling of uneasy disenchantment with both reality and your body originally arose. You’d like to blame the unfortunate instance of recess-time in the seventh grade, when Bradley James 2.0 took off his shirt in front of all the young, pubescent girls who had presumptuously wetted themselves over his acclaimed muscular condition, and had challenged you to do the same. You were his only rival, after all, and you didn’t even try. You had teased him constantly on the bus rides to and from school, but that was only because you were still a naïve, brooding asshole, and had yet to determine the grounds of “better off teasing” and “not even worth my time”. Sure, you’d love to blame middle school adolescence for all your problems just like the rest of the 21st century youth, but when you think back to that day at recess, you realize it was entirely your fault you chickened out. In fact, the reason you didn’t have the guts to pull your shirt off in front of the rest of the loserly, middle school student population, was because you were still recovering from a very visible scar on the entire right side of your abdomen.

Bradley James had claimed that you were too much of a fat-ass pussy to strip in public, but you know there was no way you’d get away with blaming a scar that size on just another failed attempt to grind on the library rails with a shitty skateboard. But never once, however, did you consider outing the real source of the bandaged scar, which was entirely formulated at the hand of your older brother’s katana.

Now, three years later, it just so happens that when you’re standing naked, dripping wet from a cold shower which you wouldn’t have taken without the perused persistence from your older Bro (whom had all but resisted kicking you out then and there when your putrid body odor had stained the air of the apartment) you’re all too discouraged; you’re all too alone. When you’re naked, you can actually see yourself for who you truly are, for how everyone else sees you. You don’t remember ever caring this much; having ever been this insecure. And that’s what scares you the most — not so much as losing touch with reality, like you’ve assumed all insecure, quivering teenagers tended to do at this age, but more along the lines of straying from a certain standard of cool you’ve been dying to live up to all these years, and inevitably failing somewhere down the line.

As you stare at the mirror in the bathroom, you can trace most of the scars through the foggy reflection of the glass. _Your_ scars, _your_ mistakes — every failed strife session that, fortunately for you, ended in less verbal pity exchange and more of a simple, indifferent gesture of Bro’s hand every time he flashstepped past your slouching mess on the ground, making his way back into the building. You can still see each scar that hasn’t faded into thin, pale red lines, which still call out to you in your agony-enticed bullshit, which, at this point, has got you feeling on the verge of pretty fucking worthless. But what’s worse is that your eyes can’t escape the little unnecessary pudges of skin that wrap around your hip bones either, which seem all too feminine and demanding for your taste. You’ve also started to notice how flat and inexcusably plain your stomach is, which completely bothers you for the mere fact that you’ve unconsciously associated six-pack abs with the standard norm of dopeness, imprinted somewhere small and unnoticeable on a receipt paper in the back of your mind.

If you thought about it hard enough, you really were nothing like you’ve imagined yourself to be, no longer what you’ve envision you’d turn out like, after all those years of youthful pining into a recession of clumsiness and nativity.

(Because all this time, you’ve imagined yourself as a second, more undeniably saturated image of your brother, but with a better taste in hobbies and a broader wardrobe.)

You’re still dripping wet from the cold shower, gazing at your naked body in the mirror for Lord knows how long, when you hear the door handle to the bathroom jostle. For a few short seconds, you remember you had forgotten to lock the door on your way in, and in those same short seconds, it slams wide open, your Bro standing at the door with a towel and an unreadable expression on his face.

Sure, you’re a little surprised at his presence (determined by the lack of knocking), but you can’t shake this vaguely uncomfortable feeling with him seeing you naked, and in that same vein, vulnerable as can be.

“Hey?” You manage to cough out, fake-fumbling for your red toothbrush and some Colgate mint toothpaste.

He doesn’t say anything for a moment, and you can feel some sort of undeniable tension in the air in that short, hesitant silence.

“Kid, you take way too fucking long to get ready,” is all he mutters, gently shoving past you to reach for his own orange toothbrush.

You grab your boxers from the toilet lid and retreat back into your bedroom to get dressed. You’re actually pretty glad he didn’t bother to question just why you’ve decided to engage in an hour-long combative struggle with your physical appearance in the bathroom mirror. You’re glad he doesn’t try to pry, and you appreciate that about him, to say the least.


	2. chapter two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last of the build-up, I hope. Next chapter is where the good stuff happens; I've already finished half of it (the latter half, haha).

Bro’s incapability to notice your gradual, growing discontent with your body doesn’t actually bother you all that much, you’re sure of it. After all, it’s not like you’ve given him much to go off of. All you’ve done so far is neglect to walk around the apartment shirtless like you would have usually done way back when, and instead, begun to don a rather plain t-shirt or simplistic wifebeater in place.

As time goes by, however, you’ve also started to become more hesitant to just casually saunter around in your old hearts boxers as well, despite the fact you’ve almost always had a clean t-shirt to accompany them.

In reality, you’ve started to notice small, unfortunate things about your legs. You’ve started to bruise more easily, sort of like you’ve suddenly just been graced with the sensitive prick skin of a baby lamb, which bothers you so fucking much. _It doesn’t have to stop with the chest scars does it_ — nah, you’re guaranteed to reach that point of self-deprecating dissatisfaction where it starts to really hurt both your brain and image. Like the poor man’s life falling to pieces after his girlfriend dumps his frugal ass, shitty feelings are inevitable. 

The universe fucking hates you.

It’s also got another problem, though, the bruises thing. Aside from not being able to been seen in your boxers (mostly by your Bro, whom is the only one who’d ever catch you in it, anyway), you’ve also developed an unsatisfactory detachment from your usual fondness of skateboarding.

It’s logical, that skateboarding and overtly sensitive skin naturally wouldn’t go together. You’ve tried pulling off the long, skinny, jeans look that you were originally so picky about; you’ve tried wearing an excessive amount of joint-padding until John had picked on you for looking like the epitome of an avid advocate of a pro-safety, “stay in school and don’t do drugs” agenda.

So, you simply decide one day, you’ll stop skateboarding. It was a laughable sport, anyway; far too laughable and easily dislikable utter poseur shit that’s nearly escalated into the kind of hobby you’re certain you’ll never truly feel comfortable engaging in. Not just because of the bruises, you reassure yourself, but because nobody really likes a skateboarder anyway. Realism says they’ve never truly been able to transcend the cool. You know life’s no ‘90s lunchroom, but the fact of the matter doesn’t bother you.

\-------------------------------

Your name is Dave Strider, and at sixteen, you find yourself striving to please your Bro more and more.

It’s nothing worth beating yourself over about, you think; it’s not that much of a bad thing. Yes, it’s certainly an exaggeration to say this feeling is even borderline normal, because you know somewhere (rather pathetically) deep down that you two are not, and will not ever be normal. Sure, he’s not parental guidance Y-14 standard, and sure, you fucking hate those shitty puppets that lie around all over the place, with a burning intensity that wraps your mind in flames.

You don’t know why you try so hard. 

The reason you’ve started to realize this growing obsession is due mostly to your countless strife sessions, which only seem to pile up more and more with each passing week. You receive the written call, you drag your sword up all those flights of stairs onto the roof, and you fight with a different sort of heart than you had used to for so many years past. You wield your sword with more potency, more force, yet you continue to fail in rising victorious, each and every time.

(Still.)

It doesn’t bother him, and it has failed to bother you.

\-------------------------------

You get ready for school via the same usual and boring process: cold shower in the morning and a 30 minute staredown with your gratuitous reflection. You pace yourself better than you tend to by default, and you’re sure to lock the bathroom door this time around.

After you get dressed, you head to the kitchen and pour yourself some breakfast — an obnoxiously fake mixture of milk and cereal way too soft to taste any variant of delicious — swallowing it down rather hungrily. As you make your way through the corridor to your apartment’s front door, you hear your Bro’s voice speaking to you from the living room.

“Hey, lil’ man,” he calls out, “you gonna shred some tonight?”

You freeze in your tracks, right hand still on the door handle, nearly ready to push it open. You’re not sure what to say. As certain as you are that he hasn’t noticed how you’ve suddenly stopped skateboarding, and as certain as you’ll ever be that none of his blatant obliviousness will ever bother you in the slightest, his words still hit you like a light slap to the face. You don’t know why; that’s the worse part. You weren’t the type of person ever to get their hopes up, some small desire you’ve assumed you must’ve had, all for Bro to start noticing your prevailing restlessness.

You know, at this point, you’ve psychoanalyzed yourself far too much. You’re actually starting to think like Rose.

“Nah,” you respond after a regretful moment of pondering, voice loud enough so he can hear from his seat on the couch. You scurry out into the complex’s hallway as quickly as possible, door slamming shut behind you.


End file.
